TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is claiming Google's Chrome OS will debut next week - but his story does have an odd ring to it. He goes on and on about how driver support will be shoddy, but that makes no sense - isn't Chome OS supposed to be built on Linux? The only way I can see initial driver support to be shoddy is when Chrome OS has its own, custom graphical layer, instead of using X. However, were that to be the case, I'm sure Google would at least support some NVIDIA, ATI, and Intel chipsets. In any case, it's a rumour - do with it as you please.

I thought the same in regards to why they chose the linux kernel. I think it would have been amazing to see a force like Google behind something like Haiku-OS or even buy out the BeOS code. Though, I must admit I'm not surprised they went with the Linux kernel. It's mature, stable and fast. I don't think that the user experience should reflect on the kernel. I think what most people outside of the geeksphere think about linux has nothing to do with the kernel but rather, the user experience with the tools/GUI interaction. Google can help the image by providing a simple, clean, fast OS directed toward the nongeeks of the world. We'll see how that goes.